Tuesday, February 11, 2014

The Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka

Paperback, 94 pages

Published August 3rd 2006 by Waking Lion Press(first published 1915)

Rating: (3 of out 5)

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found
himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling,
bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece,
"The Metamorphosis." It is the story of a young man who, transformed
overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his
family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A
harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of
inadequecy, guilt, and isolation, "The Metamorphosis" has taken its
place as one of the mosst widely read and influential works of
twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us
because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

I found it difficult to cope with the absurdity of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Gregor Samsa awakes
one morning to discover he has, mysteriously, been turned into a bug. And we
are not talking about something like a butterfly, or ladybug. While there is never
a specific mention of the type of insect Gregor has been turned into, one was
infer from the rather detailed description that it is something in the
cockroach family. Ew. Now, I don’t
know about other people, but if I found myself turned into a giant bug, with no
explantion as to why or how this happened, I would not aim to live my life the
way I had previously, before I grew several more legs, antennae and could climb
walls…

Leading a normal life is exactly what our poor dear protagonist wishes
to do however. He wakes up, discovers he is a bug, wonders briefly how that
could have happened, then shrugs his insect shoulders and decides it is time to
go to work.

Throughout the story, I felt sorry for Gregor. His family was quite
atrocious. Before his transformation, Gregor was the bread winner of his
family, which consists of his mother, father, and younger sister. He worked
long and hard, at a job he could not stand just so he could support his family
and allow them to live a comfortable life. The real kicker is, Gregor gets no
thanks or any sign of gratitude from any of his family members. He does this
for them out of love, yet receives little to no love in return. After turning
into a bug, Gregor can see that his life has changed, he no longer holds the
position as the son; he is not useful because he cannot earn money anymore, he
is just a giant bug that is taking up space in the house. Gregor was
dehumanized by his work, hence the transformation into a bug occurs.

To make matters worse, his family, naturally, doesn’t take the
transformation very well. They neglect him in the end, and the ending is just
tragic.

While I didn’t particularly like the story itself, I admired Kafka’s
use of magic realism. This was a book I read for my Modern European Novel
course. The discussions we had on our interpretations of this story were immensely
intriguing. That is what I believe the purpose behind writing this story might
have been for Kafka. He wanted to give his readers something that did not have
just one sole interpretation, something that would boggle the mind and make
readers think and delve deeper into what he was trying to get across. And
because he made me do just that while reading this novel, I gave it 3 stars
instead of two. The story itself, I did not like so much, but the way it made
me think made up for that.